9-year-old weaving a name for herself

PITTSBURGH — She has 2.4 million views on her YouTube channel, a
shout-out from Jimmy Kimmel and an app in her name. She’s also just 9 years old.

What has she been doing with her free time?

Ally Aufman, a third-grader at Sewickley Academy, a private school in
Pittsburgh, jumped headfirst into the recent Rainbow Loom bracelet-making craze. The colorful
rubber band bracelets are on the wrists and ankles of kids across the country. Developed by Cheong
Choon Ng, an engineer for Nissan, and his brother Cheong Yeow Ng, the loom was named Toy of the
Year by the Toy Industry Association.

Not long after getting the loom as a gift, Ally went from casual weaver
to creative force. She had mastered the designs offered by Rainbow Loom and wanted to make her own.
She’s invented more than 20 new patterns, with names such as Nautique and Loopsy Lilly. Inspiration
comes from trying variations of other patterns and wondering what will happen when they are
flipped, inverted and reversed.

"Ding!"

That sound means Ally has had another light-bulb moment and has come up
with another idea.

She and her mother, Kim, started recording YouTube video tutorials in
June as a way to share Ally’s creations. Soon, they were getting thousands of hits and comments.
Her most popular video has 1.2 million views.

It’s been a lesson in business and communication as much as artistry, the
family says. The Aufmans sometimes get nasty comments, mostly out of frustration from other loomers
looking to follow her instructions. As the view counts climb, they say the videos are getting
better, too.

"Ally and I joke, we didn’t know a million people would watch these or we
would have been a bit more careful," said her father, Ed, a financial adviser.

The Aufmans keep a close eye on the comments and are quick to delete
profanities. But, they leave most of the negative comments. Ally responds to many of them, giving
users encouragement.

"I’ll help them and show them how to fix it," she said.

The Aufmans have since created Instagram and Pinterest accounts. Ally has
fans and followers from Asia, Canada and Europe.

"It’s fun to see the comments," Ally said. "They keep popping up, one
second ago, just now."

She’s also teaching classes at school and at the Learning Express toy
store in Cranberry, Pa.

"I like helping people and making friends so they keep coming back and
get really good, too."

Recently, she taught students how to make a rubber-band mustache, just
one of the new projects created by loomers such as Ally. She teaches how to make loom action
figures, a popular project with the boys. She teaches both her own designs and popular ones she
finds, such as the action figures.

She’s even got little brother Eddie making bracelets.

Two of her designs, Carnation and Taffy Twist, are featured in Rainbow
Loom’s book,
The Loomatic’s Interactive Guide to the Rainbow Loom, published in 2013. Ally is one of
only two children with designs in the book.

The idea for the iPhone app came after finding one from someone else that
used many of Ally’s designs and videos. With a little help from her father and an app-generating
service "Allys Bracelets" sells for 99 cents on the iTunes App Store. The app is downloaded 20
times a day on average, enough to pay for development costs. Ally says the family hopes to create a
version for the iPad.

Ally, whose favorite colors to use are teal and other blues, estimates
she has 300 bracelets in her collection. That number was much higher before she sent more than 100
to Jimmy Kimmel.

The late-night comedian asked viewers to send in examples of their
Rainbow Loom creations to create a suit for him to wear on the show. During a bit on Feb. 26,
Kimmel showed off the multicolor creation. The night before he introduced the suit, Kimmel publicly
thanked Ally and others for sending in bracelets.